This project originated from the creative minds of Arun, David, Danny, Hassan, Weiqi. The main reason for us selecting this project is, we are few among many users of the U of M Employment Website. We found that this website has lot of things that are not on par with users expectations in terms of interface and usability. We thought that it would be a good tool for us to learn User Interface Design well if we take such website as our course project, beacuse of it having a large user base but yet was in the back seat when it comes to usability.
Purpose:
The purpose of the U of M Employment Website Re-Design is to Re-Design the present employment website in such a way that the use interface of the website will be appealing to the users and increase the usability of the web site. We want the conceptual model to be same as the user model, so that the user can interact with the website more effectively than before. We want the website to be more personalized and the user should feel comfortable with the website. The website mainly caters to the needs of the students of U and to those who wants to connect themseleves to the U of M. Users can go through a wide range of positions avaialble at the U of M and can apply to those positions through this website.
Tasks Supported:
Task1
o Bob is a freshman at University of Minnesota. He is from Minneapolis, but lives on campus. He has light course work and wants to find a part time job. He has no previous work experience and wants to find his first entry level position. He logs onto the university employment website to begin his search.
Task 2
o Tom is a computer science graduate student at the Twin Cities campus graduating next year. He has previous work experience, but no relevant programming positions. He is looking for a position in the field of Web and Database programming in Twin Cities.
Task 3
o While doing her search, Michelle found several positions that her liked. Michelle wants to apply for one of them. She wants to get a position description, requirements, and the application material he needs to submit for the position.
Task 4
o Michelle has successfully applied for the first position. Now Michelle wants to apply for the remaining positions.
Task 5
o Anna is currently a janitor at a local elementary school. She learned about the benefits of working at the University of Minnesota and has applied for many positions. A week has passed and she wants to check the status of her applications. She only wants to view the applications that have been reviewed and accepted.
Users:
The user base for this website is very huge. Users of this Website are Students of University of Minnesota system, and those who want to work at U of M as faculty or staff.
Benifits and Drawbacks:
The main benifit of choosing this kind of project is that we are already very familiar with the website and we know what we want to do. We will already have a system which is developed but with lot of usability problems, so it will be a good practical implementation of the theoretical knowledge which you get from the class. you need not worry about designing a new system from scratch
The main drawback in choosing this kind of project is what ever you do will be compared with the old website, so you need to be careful about this. You should be able to design it in such a way that keep in tact the good features and implement new and should show the difference in a clear way.
I recommend to choose these kind of projects, because you can learn how to apply the concepts you learnt well, first by being able to find out usability problems and then able to solve them. But be cautious that your design will always be compared with old one.
